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Originally Posted by Army Wife'79
Aye yi yi. I have seen this often, and it never ends up pretty. OK, one time it did but they got married and didn't tell a soul, not mom, not best friend, not even the dog. The only evidence was the Mil ID in her wallet (hidden) and she only pulled it out at the PX, or Commissary etc. She did tell everyone 10 years later. "Loose lips sink ships" and it's sooo hard to keep the trap shut in these matters. Why? Although ppl say they don't care, they do, and at the last minute they will start to "bail" on you and will say snarky things like "what's the big deal, they're already married" and it really takes away from your day. Plus, if you tell the BFF's they will get you presents and then a year later ppl just feel like "I've already given them a gift, I don't need to go to this one". I know they say they will, but I've seen so many of these go sour. To the point that the Bride and groom just say "screw it, we'll forget the big wedding".
Can you just speed things up and do it in Sept. w/o the best man of choice? I would personally go that route. Men understand and are cool with this.
If you are doing it just for the Tricare and his BAH, you need to "worst case scenario" it and say who is the best person, you or his mom, to move out to Walter Reed for a year or more if he's in rehab and comes home w/o limbs etc. This is just too serious for me to sugar coat it for you. Sorry.
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The problem with this is he really has his heart set on certain people being there and they are all deployed right now and won't be home until after he will next year. Also, my dream venue has to be booked exactly 1 year out on a lottery system so we would have to scramble to put something together for this September and it would be half-assed - something a pledge sister of mine did right before she deployed and ultimately she's not happy with it. The plan for her was to have a small wedding down on the beach in FL and have a big shin dig up in DC when she returned home since her first year of marriage would have been spent apart and so many people would not have been there for the small one but now she's home on emergency leave and if things go the way they're going she will end up staying home and never having the big wedding that her husband and family wanted because she knows it wouldn't be appropriate.
Your statements are exactly what I was worried about and J only sees this as paperwork and didn't seem to realize the ramifications of this until I talked to him today. I don't want to lie to our guests and I'm hoping that having a nice wedding for them to attend next year will entice them (if that's even the right word) to come down to GA and celebrate with us. All of the guests will know our situation as far as his deployment and stuff goes so I'm hoping that they will be understand and be considerate enough to go along with our plan. True, it's not exactly kosher according to etiquette rules but I'd rather be open about it than lie to everyone and have people be really pissed at us. I won't be expecting any gifts and such until next year for the big day and I hope to make this very clear to our guests as to our intentions and why/how we're doing this.
Also, J was kinda upset he would most likely miss out on his bachelor party since a lot of the guys are deployed so we compromised and I decided that if we do this I'll have mine this summer and he can do his next year. Not sure if that's kosher either but he feels it's ok and I feel it's not so we compromised like that.
He still has to talk to his parents and see how they feel about it - I would assume they'd want to be there (that was my mom's first question when I told her). But if they have serious reservations about this, then we may wait after all... As to who would be there for him should a serious injury occur, I really don't know how to answer that. I think I would be devastated if I couldn't be there but then again so would his mother. As to who he would want there, I really don't know but I feel like it would be me. So far on this deployment, he calls me every week like clockwork with occasional e-mails, his parents get a call every few weeks. That's not to say he's not close with his parents, cuz he is, but he definitely keeps me more up to speed with things and I usually seem to know more about how things are going than his mom when I talk to her. I also get calls from the FRG group updating me on meetings and things that happen in his battalion.
I guess ultimately we should do what we feel is right for us - I care about wedding etiquette but at the same time it doesn't fit with everything we have planned so we may have to just fudge some things I guess.
Hybrid Mode
